Joseph B. Kershaw

Joseph Brevard Kershaw (5 January 1822-13 April 1894) was a Major-General of the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War.

Biography
Joseph Brevard Kershaw was born in Camden, South Carolina in 1822, and he became a lawyer in 1843 before serving in the State Senate from 1852 to 1856. Kershaw served in the US Army during the Mexican-American War, and he was allowed to return home to the United States after falling violently sick in Mexico. Kershaw was given command of the 2nd South Carolina Infantry Regiment of the Confederate States Army when the American Civil War broke out in 1861, and he would fight alongside Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia in northern Virginia, Maryland, and southern Pennsylvania during the major battles of the war. After the Battle of Gettysburg, Kershaw was transferred to the Army of Tennessee in the Western Theater of the war, commanding Confederate forces at the Battle of Chickamauga in late 1863. Kershaw later returned to Virginia in time to fight in the Overland Campaign, leading a division at the Wilderness, the bloody Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, and at Cold Harbor, all in the summer of 1864. After the evacuation of Richmond, Kershaw's regiment was transferred to Richard S. Ewell's corps, and he was captured at the Battle of Sailor's Creek in 1865. After the war, he served as President of the State Senate, and he later served as Grand Master of the Freemasons in the state. Kershaw died in 1894 at the age of 72.